APRIL 2

Comrades! An almost fatal misunderstanding has occurred here. I took the floor on a point of order (which comrade chairman underlined), and not for a concluding speech. I asked for the floor on a point of order in order to request that the congress make a departure from procedure and norm. There exists a procedure that after a decision has been adopted, any further intervention in that question is improper. I ask the congress to give me 4-5 minutes in order to speak against the decision that was erroneously adopted.

When I heard that the congress had adopted this decision, and when I heard that comrade Ryazanov was defending it... (Ryazanov: "That is not true.") Well and fine, that at least one absurd decision got through without Ryazanov. If we truly had before us a naive young lady of about twelve years old, who yesterday would have heard that communism exists in the world, put on a little white dress with red ribbons and said that communists are pure merchants—that would be funny, we could smile at it good-naturedly, but seriously what are we doing? Where will *Pravda*, which you have deprived of advertisements, get money? The question is, how much money does *Pravda* need so that it does not fall behind *Izvestia*? You don't know? Well, I don't know either!

136
V. I. LENIN
7